


you're their hot janitor, babe

by quinnfuhbeay



Category: American Vandal (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Established Relationship, Flirting, M/M, of all kinds - Freeform, peter and sam are In Love, set in season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 19:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17290367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quinnfuhbeay/pseuds/quinnfuhbeay
Summary: Look, Sam gets it. Peter’s hot and like sneaky hot because people tend to go all She’s All That on him and not realize that he’s been fucking beautiful the whole time because he’s got dorky glasses and wears almost exclusively oversized sweatshirts. But it seems like all of St. Bernardine’s has caught on and, well, Sam’s frankly tired of people hitting on his boyfriend right in front him.Or five times that students at St. Bernardine’s flirt with Peter and one time Sam does.





	you're their hot janitor, babe

**1.**

 

They’ve been at St.  Bernardine ’s for about a week when it first happens. 

 

For the most part, all the students at St.  Bernardine ’s have been pretty enthusiastic about being interviewed for the documentary. Most of the students want to get their fifteen minutes of fame by talking about the school and the Turd Burglar on camera. It makes Sam think of how it was back in the beginning of their _ Vandal _ careers, when he and Peter weren’t Netflix-funded documentarians and wunderkids and they were just the two kind of annoying kids from the Morning Show who were running around Oceanside shoving their video cameras in people’s faces. No one really wanted to talk to them then. It’s funny what a viral docuseries and a Netflix contract will do. 

 

Now they’re legit and have a real crew -- that is, granted, them and two whole other camera people -- and everyone’s lining up to get interviewed They also have a budget that’s not just him and Peter pooling their money for red string and Post-it notes or begging Gabi to chauffeur them around or bribing Randall into filming more footage with chicken quesaritos from Taco Bell. 

 

The administration at St.  Bernardine’ s is pretty accommodating, too. They cleared out a whole classroom for them to film interviews in. It’s pretty fucking awesome. 

 

Their last interview for the day is Tori Carucci, a junior girl with shoulder length brown hair and a propensity for being pretty fucking blunt that Sam certainly enjoys as a documentarian. The interview wasn’t too specific, just gathering more background info on Kevin and DeMarcus and the school as a whole. 

 

The interview’s over and Tori’s still kind of hanging around as Sam helps their camerawoman, Angie, deal with some of the extra mic packs and Peter writes down notes about today’s session of interviews down in a notebook like the brilliant, intensely detail-oriented little investigative journalist he is. He pauses and plucks his glasses from his face to clean them on the edge of his sweatshirt. 

 

That’s when Sam catches Tori staring.

 

Peter’s squinting at his glasses with that little crease he gets between his eyebrows when they’re off and he’s trying to see. Sam loves that crease. It reminds him whenever he and Peter get to share a bed for the night and Peter wakes up, blinking at Sam like a lost and bleary eyed puppy, before spooning back up to him and mumbling  _ “five more minutes, okay?” _ in a sleep rough voice. 

 

Tori’s staring at Peter, her eyes wide. Sam gets it, honestly. Peter’s a little distracting without the glasses— the steady gaze, the eyelashes, all of it. It’s a lot for him, too, and Peter’s his fucking boyfriend. 

 

And, look, Sam gets it. Peter’s hot and like sneaky hot because people tend to go all  _ She’s All That _ on him and not realize that he’s been fucking beautiful the whole time because he’s got dorky glasses and wears almost exclusively oversized sweatshirts.

 

So he’s sympathetic about until Tori sidles up to Peter and puts a hand on his forearm to get his attention. Peter looks up with a distracted little “hmm?” and Tori smiles at him starts asking more questions, obviously flirting. Peter, of course, doesn’t notice because while he’s a brilliant and empathetic documentarian who has an uncanny knack for wheedling honesty out of people, he’s also kind of obtuse about a lot of things. It took him like three fucking years to figure out Sam was flirting with him. 

 

“Hey, Tori,” Sam cuts in, smiling a little too much. “I think that’s all we need you for today, thanks so much.”

 

“Oh,” Tori startles. “Oh, okay, thanks. I’ll see you guys later?”

 

“Yeah, we’ll see you,” Sam nods and Tori leaves, throwing a smile at Peter as she goes.

 

“What was that about?” Peter asks, looking up at Sam. 

 

He shrugs and pulls something out of his ass about the case, feigning like he had some new thought about the Turd Burglar that he wants to tell Peter. Soon enough, they do get carried away on a tangent about possible motives and then Angie’s rolling again as they talk out the case and Sam forgets about Tori’s flirting altogether. 

 

All good investigative journalism is partially driven out of jealousy, right? 

 

**...**

 

**2.**

 

The next time it happens, Sam should probably be expecting it. 

 

They’ve been interviewing all basketball players they can about the Shit Launcher and, more covertly, about whether or not anyone thinks DeMarcus could be involved. So far they’ve been pretty tight-lipped about, which makes Sam start thinking idly that maybe they should a doc on the hive-mind and protectionism in athlete culture in American someday. 

 

Gonzo is about as cagey as any of the basketball players have been, except for DeMarcus, who fucking radiates a kind of easy going charm and loves to chat about anything in front of the camera. 

 

“So does DeMarcus usually drink horchata?” Peter asks, Sam filming next to him. 

 

“Aw, man.” An unexpected grin spreads across Gonzo’s face. “No one here pronounces it right.”

 

Peter laughs, sounding a little surprised. “Yeah. They all say whore-cha-ta, don’t they?”

 

“Gringos, man,” Gonzo says, still smiling conspiratorially. “But yeah D drinks horchata pretty often. He says he does it “for the culture.”

 

Gonzo actually does a pretty decent DeMarcus impression. Sam tries not to snort. 

 

After a few more questions, especially a few more about the Turd Burglar card which Gonzo still maintains was a yogurt card despite what Chloe says, they tell Gonzo that he’s free to go

 

“Hey, man, let me know if you ever wanna get horchata sometime,” Gonzo says to Peter. “There’s this great taco place a couple blocks from here, I can show you sometime. Their horchata’s way better than the school’s.”

 

“Thanks,” Peter says. “Maybe if we have a little time off from the case.”  

 

Gonzo smiles and claps Peter on the arm as he leaves which is totally like a patented gay flirting move. Sam would know; he spent years coming up with friendly and innocuous excuses to touch Peter. Intricate rituals and shit. He knows. 

 

Peter says something off-handedly about Gonzo being nice as he jots down more notes about what Gonzo said. Sam just nods, messing with his camera. 

 

Nice. Sure. That’s it. 

**...**

 

**3.**

 

They’ve staggered their lunch breaks today, which means when Peter and Mike, their camera guy, finish eating they take over for Sam and Angie. Peter being Peter ordered their food, too, and he hands over a Wendy’s bag. 

 

“Fries and onion rings?” Sam asks hopefully. 

 

“Duh,” Peter smiles. “It’s like you think I don’t your fast food orders, dude.” 

 

Sam knows he’s really in love with Peter because even things like that make him a little dreamy. He also knows they’re teenage boys because Peter calls him dude in the same exact tone that he calls him “babe” or “baby” but that’s mostly unrelated. 

 

He beams at Peter and takes the Wendy’s bag, pulling out Angie’s and Chloe’s food and handing it off to them. After a few minutes of a idle chatting, Angie ducks out to call her husband, leaving Sam to eat with Chloe. 

 

He glances up to where Peter’s interviewing, another student, Riley Grossinger. She’s leaning into the camera a bit, completely looking at Peter and not the camera, which is good, but she’s smiling at Peter a little too big and… yeah. Riley’s hitting on Peter. That makes three. 

 

Sam must make a face because Chloe nudges him. She knows that he and Peter are together because she may have walked on them making out against the kitchen counter of her guest house which was embarrassing, but better her than their Netflix camera crew. And, frankly, a lazy makeout session with Peter pressing Sam back into the counter as they waited for their pasta to finish cooking is probably one of the more PG things that Chloe could’ve walked in on. She’s been really cool about it and it’s kind of nice to have someone in Bellevue know about them as  _ them _ .

 

“Does this happen in Oceanside, too?” she asks, nodding at Riley flirting with a completely oblivious Peter, who is asking her more questions about the Turd Burglar. 

 

Sam struggles a answer for a moment. People don’t really hit on Peter at Hanover High School because 1) his nerdy AV geek reputation remains solid even though he’s hot as hell and kind of famous 2) yeah, he’s the Vandal dude, but he’s also the dude that spilt like everyone at Hanover’s secrets to the world sophomore year 3) Sam’s basically been subconsciously pissing a circle around Peter since before they were even dating and 4) a lot of people -- notably Dylan Maxwell -- thought the two of them were together long before Sam ever worked up the courage to tell Peter he liked him. No one’s going to hit on Peter Maldonado at Hanover because they know him and Sam are a thing.

 

“I mean it’s different at Oceanside,” Sam says finally. “We’re the  _ Vandal _ guys, but there’s, like, more baggage with being the  _ Vandal  _ guys at Hanover.” 

And, in Sam’s opinion, people who only started liking Peter after  _ Vandal _ took off frankly don’t deserve him. Anyone who couldn’t see how passionate and brilliant and beautiful he always was are idiots. Sam’s had a crush on Peter since he was thirteen and Peter single-handedly spurred his Big Bi Crisis (capital letters very much intended). Everyone else should respect their fucking elders. 

 

“Yeah, I guess,” Chloe shrugs. “He’s like fresh meat at St. Bernie’s. We don’t get new cute boys very often around here.”

 

“I fully realize that being jealous is ridiculous,” Sam says, mostly for his own benefit. “Peter’s gay. It’s not like he’s going to leave me for some girl.”  

 

“I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t leave you for anyone,” Chloe says and Sam has to hide his dopey grin because she’s right. St. Bernadine’s flirty students and Sam’s pangs of jealousy aside, he and Peter are pretty solid. It took them a long time to figure their shit out, but ever since the summer after sophomore year, after they wrapped the first season of  _ Vandal,  _ it’s just been them. Sam even thinks about forever and it’s not nearly as scary as it probably should be for an eighteen year old. He’s been sure about Peter before he was sure of anything. He can see snippets of their future sometimes -- visiting each other at college, going to Emmy’s and winning this time (Peter’s all “it’s an honor to be nominated” about it, but fuck that Sam likes to win), investigating more ridiculous crimes, doing anything at all as long as they’re together.  

 

“Yeah,” Sam breathes, still smiling a little. “You’re right.” 

 

**...**

 

**4.**

 

Being unsupervised in the Lyman’s guest house with his boyfriend is awesome and domestic as fuck and Sam’s already dreading going back to Oceanside to their parents’ houses. 

 

They sleep in the same bed every night and Peter cooks for him and sometimes in the morning while they get ready Sam brushes his teeth while Peter showers which he knows is a stupid thing to get all gooey about, but still. It’s nice. It’s really nice. It makes Sam think of how their future again and how theirs could be one day, even one day soon. 

 

He’s using some their downtime from the Turd Burglar to work on college apps on the urging of his mother’s roughly 29 text reminders to make different application deadlines. Honestly, Sam is still a little freaked about the whole “potentially going to different colleges” thing. He and Peter have basically lived inside each other’s pockets since the seventh grade, before they were even dating. The idea of being apart for months at a time sort of makes Sam’s stomach turn. 

 

He forgets about it, though, when Peter appears from the bathroom shirtless with his sweats slung slow on his hips. Sam wants to pull Peter to him by the hips and he realizes he can so he closes his laptops and does.

 

“Hi, baby,” Peter says softly, his smile looking a bit bashful even after nearly two years of dating. But really who the fuck is Sam to talk with the way that baby in Peter’s low voice always does something to him? Sam’s stomach still fucking becomes a butterfly garden with that one word. 

 

“Hi,” Sam’s eyes flutter closed as Peter leans down to kiss him, soft and familiar. He pulls him down onto the couch with him, maneuvering them so he’s tucked into Peter’s side. 

 

“What were you doing?” Peter asks and he’s carding his fingering through Sam’s hair so it takes him a minute to get his mind back together and reply. 

 

“College apps,” Sam mumbles, burrowing further into his side. 

 

“Are you not finished with them?” 

 

Of course, Peter, who is organized and methodical to a fault, would say that. 

 

“Mostly,” Sam lies.

 

“Sammy.”

 

“I’m serious! I mostly am,” he insists, leaning up to kiss his boyfriend so he’s not caught procrastinating. It works because Peter pulls off his glasses and carefully folds them up, setting them on the coffee table, kissing Sam back sweetly. That derails any talking for a couple minutes, Peter’s hands snaking up the back of Sam’s shirt and Sam’s about to say fuck it and just blow his boyfriend on the couch and then-- 

 

Then Peter’s phone buzzes. 

 

They both break apart, sitting up immediately. The Turd Burglar has been messaging them sporadically for the last few weeks and it could be them. Peter scrambles for his phone and glasses. Sam even starts searching for where they left the nearest camera in case they need to film this for the doc. They can throw a pillow over Peter’s lap if they need to. He starts trying to locate the nearest shirt because Peter’s still all warm skin and blown out pupils behind his glasses on the couch. 

 

“Oh,” Peter says, disappointed, before Sam can get up and grab a camera. “It’s just from Molly.” 

 

Sam hooks his chin over Peter’s shoulder so he can read the Instagram DM. It’s from mollyh_00 and it says  _ Heyy Peter! Just wanted to let you know that I’m free if you guys need anything else for the doc :) let me know!  _

 

“Subtle,” Sam mutters. That’s a DM slide if he’s ever seen one. Like. Two yy’s? Did no one watch season one of  _ Vandal _ ? Or, he guesses, maybe they did and they think it’s like mating call for Peter or something. 

 

Peter frowns, confused. His glasses are a little askew on his nose. “What?” 

 

“Nothing,” Sam says, kissing his boyfriend to distract him. If Peter doesn’t remember the significance of the double yy’s right now, Sam’s not going to remind him. He takes Peter’s glasses off again so they don’t get in the way. 

 

Peter locks his phone without replying, his hands coming up to cup Sam’s face in that gentle way that always kind of shatters him. They make out for until Peter pulls back, breathing a little hard but not asthma-hard. He kisses Sam’s jaw on the corner, a tender thing. Sam rubs his hip through his sweatpants, gentle and familiar.

 

“Paul Schnorrenberg’s gonna tell us we’re going to hell,” Sam jokes a bit breathlessly and Peter rolls his eyes, but kisses Sam again. 

 

“It’s movie night,” Peter reminds him between kisses. “You remember, right?”

 

Sam pulls away to give him an unimpressed look that even nearsighted Peter can make out. Like he’d forget _ movie night _ .  “Put on something we can make out to.”

 

“So you mean something, I don’t actually care if I can see,” he teases and Sam kisses his chin in a fit of affection. God, he loves this fucking dork. 

 

“Duh, babe.” 

 

Peter queues up  _ 13 Going 30  _ and pulls Sam back down to him by the front of his shirt. All in all, it’s a pretty good movie night. 

 

**...**

 

**5.**

 

Sam knows that whole flirting thing is harmless, mostly, but he’s frankly tired of people hitting on his boyfriend right in front him. He knows it’s mostly because they don’t know that Sam and Peter are together because professionalism. But still. It’s annoying. He should be the one hitting on his own boyfriend. 

 

It reaches an all time high when while they’re filming another student interview, this time with Mia Abend, when Peter absent-mindedly tries to take a sip of his smoothie and spills is all over his shirt. 

 

“Shit,” Peter swears and Sam motions for Angie to stop rolling. They’ll have to cut this out and Mia’s interview was pretty much wrapped up anyways. Might as well stop filming.

 

“God, you really soaked your shirt through, Pete,” Sam says, mostly sympathetic because he’s a good boyfriend but also a little amused because two years of dating doesn’t cancel out nearly six years of best friend teasing. 

 

“Yeah,” Peter mumbles. So, naturally, he strips off his shirt. 

 

Mia looks like she might pass out. She’s already been flirting throughout the interview, between questions as Peter laughed and nodded politely and nudged her back on track. She looks like she’s going to combust now. People don’t usually realize how toned Peter actually is under the hoodies. 

 

“Here, take my jacket,” Sam offers.

 

“Thanks,” Peter mutters, shrugging it on. “Do we have any extra clothes in the car?”

 

“Probably, want me to check?” 

 

“That’d be awesome,” Peter says, his hand skimming down Sam’s arm and gently squeezing his hand in thanks. 

 

“Sorry about that, Mia,” Peter says, all apologetic and professional as he’s zipping up in Sam’s blue hoodie. “I think we’ll cut it here for today. We’ll let you know if we need anything else.” 

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Mia nods a bit frantically. “Of course, anything you need-- I mean anything you guys need.” 

 

Peter doesn’t look like he notices a damn thing, smiling and nodding at Mia as she practically trips over her own feet leaving the classroom. 

 

Angie, their camerawoman bites her lip like she’s trying not laugh. Sam sort of wants to bang his head against the wall, but he just goes out the car to find whatever t-shirt one of them last left in there. 

 

**...**

 

**\+ 1**

 

They’re sitting in the kitchen of the guest house eating dinner when Sam finally brings it up. 

 

Peter’s cooked again because he’s branded Sam as hopeless in the kitchen with anything but Easy Mac and Ramen, something that Sam’s not really going to complain too hard about. 

 

To be honest, before coming to the Lyman’s guest house, Sam had been half excited because of the obvious reasons -- boyfriend, king-sized bed, no adult supervision, the large amounts of privacy between shooting that being alone in a house with Peter provided. But he was also half nervous because cohabitating, even for a short period of time, was a big deal. His favorite older sister moved in with her boyfriend and she said it was an adjustment to get used to living with a whole new person you’d never lived with before, even if you were in love with them. 

 

Except it wasn’t like that, really. Sam already knew all of Peter’s annoying ticks and habits from years of friendship and then dating and countless late nights spend editing  _ Vandal. _ Living together has been mostly just nice. Comfortable. 

 

Now Sam’s just dreading going home at the end of their investigation. He’s going to have to sleep in his own bed again, not all snuggled up against Peter’s chest, and not steal food off of Peter’s plate half the time and not make out in the shower when they have time, laughing and washing the soap out of each other’s hair, and he’s pretty sure it’s going to fucking suck. 

 

After dinner they end up on the couch, talking about the case. Peter sweeps Sam’s bangs out of his eyes absent-mindedly as he’s talking about the Brownout again, which should not be at all romantic but sort of is.

 

“Everyone at St. Bernardine’s has been really helpful, too,” Peter says, coming in hot off a tangent about the case. 

 

“You know that, like, half of St. Bernie’s has been hitting on you, right?” Sam interrupts, finally, sitting up at the way.

 

“No, they haven’t,” Peter frowns because he’s both incredibly oblivious to some things and incredibly self-deprecating. Not only doesn’t Peter not notice someone hitting on him, he can’t really imagine someone hitting on him. For Exhibit A, see him taking forever to realize that Sam was so in love with him by sophomore year that he was basically doodling different versions of their hyphenated last names in his Algebra notebook. For Exhibit B, see him making a six minute investigation into Sam’s supposed crush on Gabi which definitely hadn’t been a thing since Sam was, like, twelve. 

 

“Yes, they so have.”

 

“Okay, give me hard evidence, then,” Peter says stubbornly 

 

“Hard evidence is more of last season’s theme on  _ Vandal _ .”

 

“Sammy.” 

 

Sam huffs. So much for exploiting Peter’s journalism kink and going back their roots with the dick jokes. “Okay, hard evidence -- Tori and Riley both hit on you during a bunch of their interviews.”

 

“They did not.”

 

“So did Gonzo!”

 

“Gonzo was not hitting on me.”

 

“Babe, he literally asked you out right in front of me,” Sam says. 

 

Peter pauses, looking a bit horrified. “Oh my god, did he?” 

 

Sam can’t help laughing, 

 

“You’re their new hot janitor, babe,” he says, teasing. Yeah, Gonzo and all the other flirters made him kind of jealous, but that all feels pretty insignificant when he’s the one curled up next to Peter on the couch, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. 

 

“I don’t want to be their hot janitor,” Peter says stubbornly. And then, quieter, in that painfully earnest way that he has sometimes, he says, “I wanna be your hot janitor.”

 

Sam grins because, fuck, he loves Peter. He loves Peter so fucking much. He swings his leg over so he’s sitting in Peter’s lap. “You’re already my hot janitor.”

 

Peter smiles, not like how he does in pictures or at all people they interview or even at their friends back home in Oceanside. He smiles like he only does when he’s looking at Sam. “Yeah, that’s just because you never pick up your laundry though.”

 

“Dumbass,” Sam says fondly.

 

Peter kisses him anyways. 

**Author's Note:**

> \- all credit to phonecallfromgod for very graciously letting me use and mention mike and angie, their OCs, as the camera people! please check out their work if you haven’t, it’s absolutely phenomenal.
> 
> \- this fic was also created out of three main factors: 1) my extreme thirst for tyler alvarez 2) my dire need for more established relationship eldonado content 3) the fact that i literally ready every single fucking eldonado fic on ao3 in, like, a weekend
> 
> \- also as we all well know, tyler alvarez is a thot and while peter maldonado is decidedly not, i don’t believe that none of the st. bernie’s student body didn’t wanna tap that. it’s just not realistic
> 
> \- also this is highkey the first fic i've finished in years lmao and it's completely unbetaed and was written in approximately 2 hours


End file.
